


i walked with you once upon a dream

by SafelyCapricious



Series: things you find in a graveyard [21]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Related, F/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 03:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: “I don’t care what they think!” Vex’s voice wavers, and Vax tightens his grip on her shoulders in response, pulling her in until they blend into each other, becoming one. “He’s going to be perfect and they’re all just jealous!”Vax disagrees, silently. There’s no one out there who is good enough for his sister, and the elvish children would no doubt be disinherited if they were discovered to have soul marks. After all, pureblood elves just know, he mocks in his head, they don’t need crude marks to tell them who their soulmate is.





	i walked with you once upon a dream

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Once Upon a Dream because it happened to be playing when I finished this. 
> 
> Another Vaxleth! This one is a soulmate AU! Because of course it is! I kinda want to do more with this, but working within the canon universe may have been a mistake for me (so many things to keep track of and so little time!). So I hope you enjoy this for now!
> 
> <3 <3 Fictober continues, we are 21/31 now and I am very proud of myself.

“I don’t care what they think!” Vex’s voice wavers, and Vax tightens his grip on her shoulders in response, pulling her in until they blend into each other, becoming one. “He’s going to be perfect and they’re all just jealous!” 

Vax disagrees, silently. There’s no one out there who is good enough for his sister, and the elvish children would no doubt be disinherited if they were discovered to have soul marks. After all, pureblood elves just know, he mocks in his head, they don’t need crude marks to tell them who their soulmate is. 

It’s not like Vax and Vex need something else to identify them as different from the children they study with, but since they woke up with marks seared into their skin the mocking has gotten worse — or more pointed — or maybe Vax is now so used to ignoring it about himself that he’s thrown with the urge to defend his nameless someone who will make the other half of his soul. 

But he hates it. And Vex hates it.

And why are they here anyways? 

Vex tells him that her mark hurts sometimes, or buzzes or hums or something. He never gets that from his mark, and he’s not sure if he should be jealous or smug that if he touches it all he gets is warm comfort. It curls over his heart, an intricate knot of wood and stone and flame and plants that looks alive in firelight, and whoever it matches must, he thinks, be a good person.

He thinks it should hurt, stab him, the first time he stabs someone else, but it doesn’t, and when he raises his hand to his heart he can feel the comfort in time with a heart that’s not his own, as another heart drains out before him. And he thinks that someone that good cannot possibly be for him.

Soulmates, after all, don’t always work out.

But he has to pretend, for Vex if not himself. 

She believes less than him — by the time they’re on their own together, at least — doesn’t even think the match to her twisted metal and shadow even exists, or that she’ll ever meet them if they do. 

So he has to believe for her, because he’s sure that someday she’s going to finally meet someone who loves her for everything she is. 

And maybe he believes a little for himself, as well, and as much as he tries not to think about the other half of his soul he still has ideas and — 

Maybe it’s the ideas he comes up with that make it hard to tell, or maybe no one ever knows until they’re shown. 

He doesn’t realize it’s her, at first. 

He doesn’t realize it’s her for a long time, actually. 

He falls in love, with her, before he even knows it’s her. 

And it changes nothing and everything all at once.

They’re on their way to Whitehall when Scanlan asks Grog if he’s got a soulmark — and then, sly, if he knows where Pike’s is or what it is. Vax walks away from the campfire to have a moment away from the nonsense — Scanlan magicking himself an image of Pike’s face for his own soulmark and trying to get Grog to drop skirt to see if maybe his mark is somewhere he’s never seen — he waits to come back until he thinks it’ll be over but it’s not. And when he comes back it’s even worse somehow. 

“Course I have a soulmark!” Keyleth is saying, and then she’s pulling off her entire top. 

Vex, who apparently hadn’t realized he’d vanished from around the fire, reaches out to cover his eyes, or where his eyes would’ve been if he hadn’t snuck away earlier, and he feels his mouth go dry at the feather-knife mark that lays between Keyleth’s breasts. 

Percy is putting his jacket over her quickly, thankfully, arm curved around her shoulders and pulling her close in a rare moment of physical affection from the man, made all the more stark when he announces that he lost his soulmark when the Briarwoods came. 

Vax is too distracted by the sight of Keyleth attempting to fight her way back into her own shirt behind the cover of Percy’s coat to comment.

Because that is his mark. That is his soul.

And when he finally settles by his sister, he thinks she sees it too. She’s frowning fiercely and poking at the fire. 

“Vex,” Keyleth’s voice carries easily and Vax can’t help but look at her, “do you—“

“I’m going to sleep.” Vex stands up just to take two quick steps and curl up against Trinket. “Wake me up for my watch.” 

“Oh,” Keyleth says softly, and Vax puts a hand over his heart instinctively and — And her gaze turns to him and — 

“I’ll take first watch,” he says, and retreats back into the darkness of the forest around them. 

“Was it something I said?” Keyleth asks Percy, softly, as he walks away. He doesn’t let himself stop and so he’s gone before he can hear Percy’s response. 

***

Headmasters don’t normally have soulmarks. It’s not that those with soulmarks are forbidden from becoming headmasters or anything, it’s just that those who know they have someone out there for them don’t always want to do it. 

Keyleth hasn’t ever been able to decide if knowing she had a soulmate would’ve stopped her if not for her mother. 

It’s a nonsensical thought of course. If her mother had become Voice of the Tempest then she wouldn’t have needed to go on her own Aramenté and then she maybe wouldn’t have even had a soulmark because she wouldn’t have met him and —

Though that’s not really how soulmarks work, she supposes. They’re just a representation of the other half of you. And that’s true whether you meet them or not. 

But she doesn’t know, if she hadn’t had to leave for her Aramenté if she would have to try to find her soulmate or if she wouldn’t have or if — 

None of that matters, she reminds herself and tries to physically shake the thoughts off. None of it matters and even if she does find her soulmate she’ll outlive them and — 

It’s nice _now_, to know that there’s someone for her and she can feel them steady and solid behind her breastbone if she touches her mark, but someday the mark will no longer have that warmth behind it and it will just be like ink on skin and — 

She’ll handle it better if she never meets them. It’ll hurt enough to miss the thought of them without having to actually miss _them_. 

So it’s fine that most of her friends, her new family, don’t have soulmarks (anymore, in the case of Percy), and don’t want to talk about it. It’s better than fine, it’s good. 

And if she tells herself that enough she’ll stop feeling like something is wrong and her soulmate needs her and she doesn’t know how to help someone she doesn’t even know.

***

“You excited to meet them?” Vax asks her, out of nowhere, when they’re on watch, and she makes a face. 

“The Briarwoods? I mean, I don’t think meet is the right word, or excited but —“ 

“No,” Vax interrupts and looks away and it’s dark but it looks like there’s a flush climbing his cheeks. “Your soulmate.” 

She blinks, rapidly, and says “No, I don’t want to meet them,” before she can think of a more politic answer since he doesn’t have one and might be insulted or something that she’s rejecting it and — “I just mean — I don’t want to fall in love.” She winces again, she’s probably being too blunt but — words are hard. 

“Understandable,” he says, voice soft, and she must’ve been imagining the flush earlier, because when he turns back to her with a tight smile there’s no color in his face at all. “I’m more tired than I thought, I’m going to see if I can get a little sleep, wake me up if you need backup.” And he lies down with his back to her and seems to fall immediately asleep.

“Oh, okay,” she says, softly, fairly sure she’s missed something but not sure what. 

***

“You know I’m in love with you, right?” he asks right before he kisses her and he’s lost a lot of blood and the world is veering a little but his soul leaps and — 

She must know.

She must. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you also ship them come yell at me on [on tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites). 
> 
> That is all, hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think!


End file.
